American Outlaw - Jesse James [4]
There was a flat steel rod in the door, and you could take a screwdriver with a rubber mallet and bam, pound it right underneath the lock. You’d hit the rod and pry it open, and it would unlock the door. Then there’d be a cast-aluminum tilt column behind the steering; you could hit that with a hammer and it would crack open like a nut. Then you just put anything in the ignition, and WHOOM! Good to go. A real operator could pull it off, from start to finish, in thirty seconds.
We could only drive around in a stolen car for about a day. That’s all it was safe to do, and we weren’t quite stupid enough to go longer. Then our aim would be to rip out the motor and the wheels, and try to sell them. We’d cut the rest of the car up with an acetylene blowtorch and toss the wrecked parts into a Dumpster.
I split time between my parents’ houses growing up. My mom had stayed in Long Beach after the divorce, while my dad had moved to neighboring Riverside, only a short drive away. Neither of them tried too hard to keep a close eye on their unruly, pissed-off son, though, and mostly, I was left to my own devices.
And that meant plenty of time with Bobby. Once, I remember going over to his house, and finding him up on the roof, shooting up his next-door neighbor’s yard.
“Hey, Bobby,” I said.
“What’s up, fuck face?” Bobby said politely. He didn’t look up at me: instead, he continued to stare through the range finder of his .22.
I watched him for a moment. “What’s all this?” I said.
“What’s it look like?” He pulled the trigger on the gun once: whoop. “I’m shooting shit.”
“You’re shooting dirt,” I observed.
“Yes,” Bobby agreed. He pulled the trigger again: whoop.
“Did your neighbor’s yard do something to you?” I asked.
Bobby looked up at me curiously for a moment. “Nothing in particular. Why?” He turned back to his gun and squeezed off another few rounds. Whoop, whoop, whoop. Clods of dirt and grass flew up from the perfect green turf of his next-door neighbor’s lawn.
“Hey, you got a silencer on there, huh?”
“Mm-hmm,” Bobby said. “Made it myself out of a plastic two-liter.”
Just as Bobby took aim at the next clod of dirt, the neighbor’s dog bounded out to investigate the odd, silent disturbance that was causing his yard to erupt magically from within.
Whoop.
Bobby’s rifle jerked up as the Labrador fell to the ground, dead.
“Holy shit!” Bobby croaked.
“You fucking asshole!” I shouted. “Goddamn you! You sick fuck!”
“Geez, James, don’t get so excited,” Bobby said, shaking a little and laughing nervously.
“Man, I should kill your dog, and see how you feel about it!”
“Chrissakes,” Bobby said. He removed the silencer from his gun. “Calm down. You’re acting like it was your girlfriend.”
Bobby handed me his rifle. Slowly, he climbed down from the roof. I watched as he walked into his neighbor’s yard and examined the dog, turning its head back and forth in his hands a few times, until he determined it was indeed dead. Then he lifted up the dog’s body, hefting up the deadweight in his arms. He carried the carcass over to an open trash can and threw it in.
“There,” he offered. “Feel better?”
——
One night, we were watching TV in Bobby’s dim house, and he was flipping channels. For the second in between each station, the house would go almost completely dark. Bobby’s house was always about three lamps short of being able to see.
“Jesse, you know George’s?”
“Sure. Up there on Magnolia and Riverside. Best cheeseburgers around.”
“Exactly. BUT, did you also know that Allan’s dating a chick who works there?”
Allan was Bobby’s older brother. To no one’s surprise, he was just as mental as Bobby. He was a dangerous fuck, actually. He would beat the shit out of Bobby and anyone else for the flimsiest of excuses.
“Didn’t know that.” I shrugged.
“I go there sometimes when she’s working—she lets me go behind the counter and stuff. Eat all the fries I want.”
“She cute?”